The Stone Cattle Road () was an ancient Chinese road over the Qinling Mountains used by the state of Qin to conquer Sichuan in 316 BC. Story The story goes that King Huiwen of Qin on the Wei River wished to conquer the kingdom of Shu to the south over the impassable Qinling Mountains in the Sichuan Basin. Knowing of the King of Shu's fondness for treasure, he had his sculptors make five life-sized stone cows with gold tails and hindquarters with gold and placed them where the Shu ambassadors could see them. When the king of Shu heard of this, he thought it would be good to fertilize his treasury with golden cowpats, so he asked the king of Qin to send the cattle. The king of Qin replied that he was glad to do so, but the cattle were delicate and that to deliver them it would first be necessary to build a gallery road over the mountains. When this Stone Cattle Road was completed in 316 BC he used it to invade and conquer Shu. Sage gives a slightly different version of the story. Another source mentions a Golden Ox Road () which passes through the western end of the Qinling Mountains over the Tianshaling and Wuting passes. Legend says it was built to seize oxen of a similar nature that lived in the mountains. History In order to reach Sichuan from Qin one must travel south over the difficult Qinling Mountains to the Han River basin and then southwest over the Daba Mountains to the Sichuan Basin. Naturally there were footpaths, but sending an army, and the later extraction of tribute, required a road suitable for wheeled vehicles. For the more difficult sections a gallery road had to be constructed. Horizontal holes were bored into the rock and logs inserted in them. Where possible, vertical logs were placed to support the outer ends and the whole was covered with planks. (In 1979 Chinese archeologists located 56 horizontal holes and 190 vertical holes in 22 different locations.) If the Qin invasion of 316BC was a sudden decision provoked by the Marquis of Zu's quarrel with the King of Shu then the road, or part of it, must have been in place before this. The more difficult northern part was in Qin territory, the southern part in Shu and the middle part in Ba, although the exact boundaries